ROME - Difficult start for the rice harvest with, according to Coldiretti, a violent storm with water bombs, wind and hail that struck between Pavia and Novara where more than half of Italian rice is produced and in the affected companies damage is counted from 80% to 100% of the crop.
While a niche production such as that of Calabria is growing where, in particular in the plain of Sibari, there are more and more agricultural entrepreneurs who bet in the "checkered sea".
So defines his rice fields in Cassano allo Jonio (Cosenza), Matteo Perciaccante, a young face together with the brothers of Masseria Fornara, a company founded in 1870 which - with 100 hectares owned and another 500 managed by sybarite solvers - has been able to evolve and 1982 he stopped the role of supplier of rice from pileria to the food industry of the North to start making rice from seeds.
"In Calabria there was no rice culture - says Perciaccante - and the chefs are helping us to introduce this ingredient into the local cuisine. We make 60% of Carnaroli production, which has adapted in an extraordinary way to this. habitat with brackish waters where, among the ecological quality indicators, 14 families of storks nest. We are a niche, but also the largest productive pole in the Center-South and we would like - he said - to make a double qualitative leap: the recognition of 'IGP (Protected Geographical Indication) would be a great opportunity to access new markets and close the supply chain here, with an autonomous storage system and without having to send the rice to the Ferrara area for packaging. For this reason we presented a project to the Region which includes a million euro investment and we are waiting for the calls ".
Rice is the most consumed cereal in the world and, as Coldiretti points out, Italy is the first producer in Europe, with 228,000 hectares cultivated this year and 4,000 farms that harvest 1.50 million tons of paddy rice. year, equal to about 50% of the entire EU production Good production of high quality is expected, despite the damage caused by bad weather in some northern regions, with an increase according to Coldiretti of 4% of cultivated hectares which rise to 228 thousand , of which almost 80% concentrated in three provinces of Piedmont and Lombardy (Vercelli, Pavia and Novara).